7. Make sure that you have hotplug or >=udev-096 installed for firmware loading support, wireless-tools for the iwconfig tool and wpa_supplicant if you require WPA support.
8. To use the driver, we'll insert the module first

Code:

# modprobe bcm43xx

If this doesn't work, please check dmesg to see what the problem is.

I recommend using wpa_supplicant with Gentoo's net scripts with current kernels (even for non-WPA connections). It's very easy to set up and works well now with bcm43xx.

Board specific notes:
Support for newer cards (4311/4312/4318/4319 chipsets) is progressing slowly. To support these cards properly, work has started on a new set of specs using a newer driver. Please be patient while we figure out what they changed (it's non-trivial). Despite this, it should work at lower rates (11M) for now.

432x and 433x cards (N PHY cards) are not supported at this time and have not even been spec'd yet. It's unlikely that they will be supported in the near future, but they are being worked on.

the AppleAirport2 from my panther DVD didn't worked, so I had to download some drivers from the README but it seems, not every driver got the needed firmware
once I got a dmesg line similar to simplex'

Code:

bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode4.fw" not available or load failed.
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode4.fw" not available or load failed.

so I tried another one and another one... :
(bash's for is your friend )

after 5 rebuild kernels and modules I got a combination, that seems to work, but I can't set the channel
watching with iwevent I get a message about setting channel to "0", no matter what my arguments for iwconfig are